Preserving Innocence of 4-year-old

The twin daughters have turned 4-year-old. Like most of the parents, we also get concerned about their learning / mile-stones / development or the lack of. I have noticed that the attention always remains in such discussions on what the child is learning or has learnt already. At a personal level, we also focus on a few things that we do not want our daughters to learn, not just yet. To preserve their innocence.

I have given below the list of few concepts/words that we have managed to keep them away from. We consciously try not to use these words in front of B +ve and O +ve. They, of course, listen from others and at times, from their parents also; and ask about the meaning. We try to explain to them using other terminology.

Truth / Lie. One of the songs of 3 Idiots has a lyric – “Jhooth Bolna to Papa Ne Sikhaya” and it has always remained with me ever since I heard it. I will also teach them to lie, will have to, however taking my time. Currently, we are using the words “correct” and “not correct” as the milder versions of truth and lie.

Cheat. I feel that it is too strong a word to be used by a 4-year-old. They are yet to learn the worldly ways and better to learn it with a positive emotion rather than a word that gets used for criminals. They say it is not done / should not be done in other words.

Race.

Win / Lose.

Coming First / Coming Last.

Life is forever a race. We are forever running the race, trying to win, trying to come first focusing more so on destination and not the journey. The girls will also start racing once they get into the daily grind of life. Until that time, if they can also enjoy smelling the flowers and collecting the twigs and chasing the squirrels, we feel it is good enough for their childhood.

They recently watched Asian Games, saw Hima Das running. They understood the concept of race. For win/lose or first/last, they currently know that people get different medals and toys.

Smart. I do not care whether our children are called smart or not. To be precise, I do not care whether our children are actually smart or not. I do not see any reason for a 4-year-old to be classified as smart or for that matter, any other adjective, to be used for a 4-year-old. They are children and that should suffice.

Beautiful. I suppose there are other words as well to connote a similar meaning – pretty/cute/adorable. We stay away from the limelight world of being beautiful.

Favourite. Dressing up two girls has always been a task in itself for me as a stay-at-home father. To keep my job simpler, I never got into any discussion of what their favourite colour/favourite dress is. This actually led to an unintended benefit – not just the colours and dresses are treated equally, they have ended up treating all the vegetables also equally. Both the girls eat all the vegetables without any fuss. I attribute this to keeping the concept/word favourite away from them.

Conditions. There are no talks along the lines of “If you do this, you will get this” or “If you do not do this, you will not get this”. Of course, we do not get a number of times what we want the girls to do. However, we have refrained from getting them to act on a conditional basis. As a result, they are also not aware of their rights – the right to bargain and so and so forth. The task may or may not happen but the focus will always be on the task and nothing else.

Lays / Carbonated Soft Drinks. Sugar, salt and junk food are anyways going to be an integral part of an adult life. A 4-year-old does not need to know them on an immediate basis.

There have been accusations on us of un-necessarily shielding our children / not letting them get ready for the real world.

I feel that we, as adults, keep saying that we miss our childhood. Just that, we want our children to be adults, as fast as possible.

Honestly, for us, we just want them to be children as long as they can be, preserve their innocence. After that, they are anyways going to be a replica of the world we see around us, rather what we ourselves are.